Updated Sept. 14 at 6:09 p.m.
H. Gilbert Welch resigned from the College on Thursday. He was formerly a professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. In his resignation letter, Welch wrote that he feels he “can no longer participate in the research misconduct process against [him]” as he fears that his participation “only serves to validate” the misconduct allegations, reported in the Valley News and the science news outlet STAT.
A College investigation over the summer found that Welch committed plagiarism in a widely-cited 2016 article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
TDI professor Samir Soneji and University of California, Los Angeles community health sciences professor Hiram Beltran-Sanchez had alleged that in the highly-cited article on mammograms, Welch used their data on over-diagnosing tumors in breast cancer screening without providing them with due credit.
Welch’s resignation letter stated his refusal to amend the paper to identify Soneji as the “first author.”
“Much as I have enjoyed working at Dartmouth, I am not willing to falsely attest to anything simply to stay here,” Welch wrote in the letter.
Dartmouth also is actively pursuing an investigation into allegations of retaliation in the matter, according to spokesperson for the College Diana Lawrence.
This article will be updated as more information becomes available.
